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The Hindu Business Line reports that TR4, the fungal strain that causes Fusarium wilt in Cavendish cultivars and a wide range of other types of bananas, has spread alarmingly accross India. First found in 2015 in the state of Bihar, in the northeastern part of the country, it has now spread to the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, on the west coast. The article says that banana farmers in the country are not aware of the serious nature of TR4.

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For the first time, scientists have been able to infer the origin of incursions of the TR4 fungus that causes Fusarium wilt in Cavendish bananas, as well as many other types. In a paper published in Frontiers in Plant Science, the scientists not only confirmed the presence of TR4 in Myanmar, they also uncovered molecular evidence that this particular strain, as well as the ones present in Laos and Vietnam, were likely introduced from China. Their analyses also revealed that the TR4 strains in the Philippines and Pakistan are closely related, and that the TR4 incursions in Lebanon and Jordan are associated.

The authors of the paper underscore the need for awareness campaigns and the implementation of validated quarantine measures to prevent further dissemination of TR4.

The Minister for Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries attributed minimal farm downtime on the third infested property to a prompt response by Biosecurity Queensland officers and the farm already having an established on-farm biosecurity plan.

In Queensland, infested farms must abide by biosecurity protocols to continue trading, which explains why the rate of spread has been extremely slow compared to worlwide experience.

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According to scientists who visited Laos last October, TR4 may have been introduced in the country through infected nursery plants.

As reported in The Laotian Times, the scientists spent 3 days surveying plantations of Cavendish plantations along the Vientiane-Vang Vieng road axis. A 45-hectare field established in 2014 for export to China had lost half of its production area due to a severe outbreak of TR4. Chinese managers told the scientists that the disease had appeared soon after planting tissue-culture plants imported from China, where TR4 is present. The scientists suspect that the initial outbreak was due to infected nursery plants imported from China. The presence of TR4 in Laos also threatens the susceptible varieties grown by smallholder farmers and sold in local markets.

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Nature Communications published the results of a field trial of Cavendish banana plants engineered to be resistant to TR4, the fungal strain that causes Fusarium wilt in Cavendish cultivars. The trial site was a commercial banana plantation in the Northern Territory of Australia where TR4 has become endemic.

Two of the evaluated lines were still free of the disease after three years. One had received a resistance gene isolated from a wild relative of the banana, whereas the other had received an anti-apoptosis gene derived from a nematode.

By contrast, 67%-100% of the control banana plants were either dead or infected by the fungus after three years, including GCTCV-218. According to the authors, the tissue-culture variant was as susceptible as the Cavendish cultivar Williams.

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Laos and Vietnam are two of the countries in the region that have seen a surge in Cavendish plantations set up by Chinese investors to meet the demand for bananas in China, where TR4 is present in all banana-producing regions. The other countries are Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand.

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ABC Rural announced that Australia's gene technology regulator approved a field trial of genetically modified Grande Naine bananas (a Cavendish cultivar). They were modified to be resistant to the TR4 strain of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense, the causal agent of Fusarium wilt, better known as Panama disease. Four of the lines that were part of a trial that was interrupted when the plants were removed under the Banana Freckle Eradication program will be screened along with new lines.

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Chemistry students at the University of Costa Rica developed biodegradable bunch covers, for which they won a prize at the Feria de Emprendimiento Desarrollo e Innovación. The main components are plant cellulose, cassava starch and chitin extracted from shrimp shells. The covers are five times more resistant than the conventional ones and are equipped with a system to gradually release pesticides. They take 18 months to disintegrate.

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Genetically modified Dwarf Cavendish plants representing various combinations of transgenes and promoters were field trialed in Australia with the view of transferring the technology to East African highland banana cultivars in Uganda. While none of the lines in the plant crop met the target of 50% of the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) for vitamin A in vulnerable populations, 11 lines exceeded the target in the ratoon crop. According to the authors, the results "demonstrate that, rather than there being a reduction of expression with successive vegetative generations as a result of transgene silencing, the trait was stable".

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Fusarium musea, a fungus associated with crown rot, a postharvest disease of bananas, has also been implicated in human infections in non-banana producing countries. PLOS pathogens published a Pearl (an article meant for a broader audience than its peer-reviewed papers) which reviews the current state of knowledge and proposes future avenues of research.

In August 2016, the ABGC, which represents the interests of the country’s commercial banana growers, had received the green light from its members to increase the Plant Health Australia levy from 0.0103 cents per kilogram to 0.5 cents per kilogram to raise 3m AUD that, added to the 1.5m AUD grant from the Federal Government, would be used to buy the farm. But the purchase was put on hold while sick plants in another property were tested for TR4.

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According to Banana Link, the rapid expansion of the Rainforest Alliance certification "has invited a growing suspicion that much of its success can be attributed to the laxity of the certification criteria and the undemanding nature of the certification process. This includes criteria that are difficult to test or are fulfilled easily because they are very much open to interpretation, while the auditing of certified farms is open to compromise, when all the parties involved have a financial or other interest in creating a good impression".

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Two papers published in PLOS Genetics explore the genome of three fungi that attack the leaves of bananas ― including the causal agent of black leaf streak, better known as black Sigatoka. Understanding their evolution and how they interact with the banana plant could lead to the development of tools to control these diseases.

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The FAO published the results of an assessment of the impacts of climate change on the banana value chain in Ecuador. The biophysical analysis evaluated banana suitability under climate change scenarios; the impact of climate change on yields and disease incidence; and the carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions of banana production. The socio-economic analysis examined the national social policies to ensure a fairer distribution of returns to stakeholders across the banana value chain, especially with regard to smallholder farmers and banana plantation workers.

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A report from the Polytechnic University of Madrid claims that using crop residues generated by banana production for bioenergy applications could cover 55% of the electricity demand in Ecuador's province of El Oro. The GIS study estimates that 190,102 tons of crop residues from a potentially exploitable area of 38,604 hectares would produce 19m liters of bioethanol.

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Scientists at the Wageningen University's LEI research institute recently published the results of a study on the impact of Fairtrade certification on the lives of plantation workers. One of the authors, Fedes van Rijn, told OneWorld Research that as far as wages are concerned, they did not find a difference between certified and non-certified plantations. But they did see differences in terms of in-kind benefits, such as access to housing and clean water. Workers at Fairtrade plantations were also better informed about their rights and generally more satisfied with their standard of living. The scientists also released a summary of the study and Fairtrade's response.

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Grist's food writer Nathanael Johnson weighs in on the carotene-fortified GM banana scheduled to undergo a feeding trial at the Iowa State University in the US. The project is a collaboration between Australian and Ugandan scientists. Their aim is to introduce to Ugandan subsistence banana farmers a genetically modified cooking banana with higher levels of beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, than the cultivars that are an important part of their diet. Johnson asked experts questions ranging from Aren’t there simpler ways to address vitamin A deficiency? to Why are Americans so interested?.

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The Malawi National Biosafety Regulatory Committee recently approved confined field trials of transgenic bananas, according to Crop Biotech Update. The confined field trials will be conducted at the Bvumbwe Research Station of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security for three years, from 2016 to 2018. The transgenic banana planting materials will be introduced from Australia, and evaluated for resistance against the Banana bunchy top virus. Because of losses caused by bunchy top, Malawi has been importing bananas from Mozambique and Tanzania to meet the country's demand.